openeditor

Edit files with your $EDITOR, like git commit does.

Usage

Install with: pip install openeditor

# Let user edit file
s = openeditor.edit_file("path/to/my/file.txt")
print("The file now contains:\n" + s)

# Use a temp file
s = openeditor.edit_file(
    "# Please edit this file, save and close editor when done", 
    "path/to/my/file.txt"
)
print("The file now contains:\n" + s) 

The editor is obtained from, in order of precedence:

• $VISUAL
• $EDITOR

If neither of these provide a useful editor, an exception will be thrown.

Limitations

openeditor expects an editor string similar to EDITOR=cmd such that:

1. cmd file.txt (filename as the final argument) is a correct way of editing file.txt.
2. cmd is not too complex. Simple things like space-separated flags (eg. EDITOR="vim -n") are fine but advanced shell magic may break.

If your cmd does need to be more complex, one possible workaround is to write a wrapper script that presents a compatible command-line interface to openeditor and invokes the full command as appopriate.